19 responses to “Sunday, 8/26/12, Public Square”

(from the link): We often remind ourselves to learn the lessons of the past, lest we risk repeating its mistakes. Yet nearly as often, our short-term memory fails us. Many have already forgotten how deep and daunting our shared crisis was in the winter of 2009, as President Obama was inaugurated. It was no ordinary challenge, and the president served as the nation’s calm through a historically turbulent storm.

The president’s response was swift, smart and farsighted. He kept his compass pointed due north and relentlessly focused on saving jobs, creating more and helping the many who felt trapped beneath the house of cards that had collapsed upon them.

He knew we had to get people back to work as quickly as possible — but he also knew that the value of a recovery lies in its durability. Short-term healing had to be paired with an economy that would stay healthy over the long run. And he knew that happens best by investing in the right places.

President Obama invested in our children’s schools because he believes a good education is a necessity, not a luxury, if we’re going to create an economy built to last. He supported more than 400,000 K-12 teachers’ jobs, and he is making college more affordable and making student loans, like the ones he took out, easier to pay back.

He invested in our runways, railways and roads. President Obama knows a reliable infrastructure that helps move people to work and helps businesses move goods to market is a foundation of growth.

And the president invested in our retirement security by strengthening Medicare. The $716 billion in savings his opponents decry today extended the life of the program by nearly a decade and are making sure taxpayer dollars aren’t wasted in excessive payments to insurance companies or fraud and abuse. His opponents would end the Medicare guarantee by creating a voucher that would raise seniors’ costs by thousands of dollars and bankrupt the program.

(from the link): On Thursday, Mitt Romney unveiled the latest in a series of bad ideas for taking government duties out of Washington and hiding them in the back rooms of state capitols. Mostly, Mr. Romney wants to allow states to quietly smother social programs the federal government has run for decades. In the case of his new energy policy, he wants to give states power to bypass Washington’s caution in burrowing for oil, gas and coal on federal lands.

Mr. Romney has a long list of other core federal functions that he wants to dump onto the states. He has proposed offloading Medicaid and food stamps by writing a sharply reduced check to the states to take care of the health and nutrition needs of poor people. He wants to repeal health care reform and let the states design their own programs for the uninsured (or not).

He wants to turn over federal job-training programs to the states, let them design their own unemployment insurance programs and give them a bigger role in designing immigration controls. (Of course, he is strongly opposed to giving the states flexibility in their welfare programs, lest they give money to a low-income family that isn’t working up to Republican standards.)

Even if you don’t read this piece, click over just to see the graphic. 🙂

Tampa 2012: The Rise Of The Aging, Angry White Guy

(from the link): The Republican National Convention is set to convene in Tampa this week, natural disasters notwithstanding. And while the formal job of the convention is to set a platform and nominate a presidential candidate, somehow the party is going to have to manage the deepening split between the hard right Tea Party activists and establishment Republicans. An early look at speakers and the party platform shows the Tea Party activists are winning.

I just watched Bob Schieffer of CBS News interview Marco Rubio. Rubio is going to introduce Romney at the GOP Convention this Thursday night.

Schieffer touched on many issues that these Republicans don’t want to be brought up – Todd Akin, abortion, illegal immigrants, tax cuts, Bain Capital and even that naked guy that swam in the Sea of Gaillee and Britherims.

While Marco Rubio was going down the list of the GOP talking points….I noticed something very subtle – but it was there.

Every time Schieffer touched on an issue that Republicans do not want mentioned – Rubio’s body language changed. Especially when Todd Akin was the issue – Rubio all but held his left arm down by placing his right hand over his left hand. And Rubio’s voice became much more stern – almost defensive – so, let’s see, do you think Rubio knows that Republicans are in trouble this year?

Rubio kept repeating the same GOP talking point that Republicans believe in allowing people to be confident and start businesses. And the government is to HELP them do just that.

WTF…..I thought Republicans said that THEY build their own businesses? Why should MY tax dollars go to help them just to stash the money offshore in some tax-free bank account?

And….surely, these morally superior Republicans would NOT want to use the ‘evil’ government’s money – would they?

BTW – when Schieffer mentioned that Romney told the birther ‘joke’ – Rubio’s facial expression changed at that time – but he said that Obama has even joked about this issue. And that Rubio has personally heard Romney debunk this birth certificate issue many, many times.

Oh, really? Was that before or after Romney embradced the KIng of the Birthers – Donald Trump?

Romney has painted imhself into a very tight corner with these Far RightWinger Wackadoodles – and these folks will NEVER allow Romney to place one step out of that painted-in corner.

Since Romney thinks that humor is needed on the campaign and he thinks that joking about Obama’s birth certificate is funny – then I’m sure Romney won’t mind if Democrats go around and say that America does not need a president that baptizes dead people.

There are some things that are not funny – and attacking Obama over his place of birth is NOT funny.

IIRC – Obama’s joke about the birth certificate was aimed at Trump sitting in the audience. It was more of a joke to make Trump look like a fool for buying into this entire birtherism nonsense.

BTW – Trump – I thought your paid-posse of investigators in Hawaii and had found undeniable proof that Obama is lying?

There was a time when I honestly thought Romney would cater to these right-wing wackos long enough to get the nomination, then become a sane person.

Could it still happen? Once he isn’t just the presumptive nominee will he quit being just as big a wacko nutjob as they are? I was reading an article this morning about the Romney lawyers and the legal wrangling that took place to ensure the Ron Paul delegates would fall in place. Romney isn’t popular and we’ve watched him bend like a pretzel to cater to the line drawn in the sand. Just maybe, after this week is done, will he finally give that EtchASketch a good shaking?

Of course, we all know even if Romney shows a saner side he wouldn’t see the opposition from Congress that President Obama does. He still has that little “R” beside his name and that’s all they really care about. If anyone thinks they’re concerned about debt or jobs or much of anything except winning I believe their ‘thinking’ is delusional.

(from the link): He was the last wild card left in the Republican deck. But now Ron Paul too has been deftly played, ensuring Mitt Romney holds the only hand going in to this week’s Republican National Convention.

Up until Friday, Paul’s young and wildly committed supporters held out hope of mounting a coup on the convention floor in Tampa, or at least raising the flag noisily for their 77-year-old candidate.

But last-minute manoeuvring by Mitt Romney’s legal team stripped Paul of a trove of delegates, leaving many of Paul’s libertarian-leaning supporters all dressed up with nowhere to go.

Instead Paul will end his third and likely final run for the presidency with what amounts to a political whimper: a “video tribute” to the former obstetrician and longtime Texas congressman will play on the convention floor.

However, Paul himself will not be trusted to speak. Though an invitation was proffered, it came with rigid conditions — Paul’s words would be vetted by Team Romney and include a full-throated endorsement. Ron Paul said no.

“It wouldn’t be my speech,” Paul told the New York Times. “That would undo everything I’ve done for the last 30 years. I don’t fully endorse him for president.”

I heard Kay Bailey Hutchinson interviewed and she denies there is any war on women. Instead, she says, republicans get a ‘bad rap’ from news media. As if their voting records were something the news media makes up. How oblivious can a woman be? The words sounded more empty coming from a woman than they do coming from a man! She went on for quite awhile about how the women she talks with are worried about the economy and jobs and that’s what her party is concentrating on… Do republican women simply forget, or willfully ignore, these were the topics all the republican candidates spoke about leading up to 2010 midterms, and that once elected they never again addressed these topics? I don’t know any women as gullible as Kay Bailey Hutchinson.

Women easily figured out that republicans talk a good talk to get elected. But they don’t make any of that talk become actions. Instead, they attack women — making our reproductive choices more difficult, voting against equal pay for equal work… I’ve heard them saying out loud that women should never have been given the right to vote! I guess republican women are so easy they forget about all of us who are still capable of critical thinking skills.

Kay Bailey Hutchinson is a piece of work. But she’s got nothing on Jan Pauls, (D-Dino) Susan Wagle, Kay O’Connor, Mary Pilcher Cook or any of the wingnut women in the Kansas legislature or on the Kansas Board of Education. Kansas wingnut women seem to be stupid and crazy. KBH is crazy, but only marginally stupid.

But the one thing all those women share is that they drank the wingnut Kookaide. And they, like the repuke men, want to take us back to the 1800’s. That includes KBH.

I also heard a panel discussion and one of the panel members, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, said, “We’re a party of life.” I can’t imagine why someone didn’t remind her the republican party doesn’t gives a hoot about people after they’re born unless they’re born very wealthy. The Democratic Party is the party of life — before birth, during childhood, during the time we gain our educations, when we begin our work lives, whether that be as employees or business owners, and when our lives end with dignity afforded through the Medicare or Medicaid programs.